The Consolation of Philosophy - Parabola

The Consolation of Philosophy

by

as translated by

Anicius Manlius Severinus Bo?thius

Geoffrey Chaucer

and rendered into modern English by Tom Powers

Table of Contents (click on a heading for direct link)

Introduction

Background

The Message of The Consolation

This ¡°Rendering¡±

Acknowledgements

Book I

Meter 1

Book II

Prose 1

Book III

Prose 1

Book IV

Prose 1

Book V

Prose 1

Prose 1

Meter 1

Meter 1

Meter 1

Meter 1

Meter 2

Prose 2

Prose 2

Prose 2

Prose 2

Prose 2

Meter 2

Meter 2

Meter 2

Meter 2

Meter 3

Prose 3

Prose 3

Prose 3

Prose 3

Prose 3

Meter 3

Meter 3

Meter 3

The prisoner

bemoans his fate.

He is visited by a

regal lady.

This special man has

yielded to defeat.

She determines to

cure his depression.

His grief subsides;

his vision clears.

He recognizes

Philosophy, the foe

of evil.

Fortune¡¯s stability is

in her continual flux.

Fortune¡¯s wheel lifts

and crushes.

Fortune¡¯s gifts are

hers to give and take.

The greedy man is

never rich enough.

See and cherish the

gifts you still have.

Nothing that lives is

unchanging.

To see true

happiness, you must

first understand false

happiness.

Honey is sweeter if

mouths have first

tasted flavors that are

bitter.

Men search for

happiness in riches,

honors, power, fame,

and carnal joy.

All things seek to

return to their own

path.

She demonstrates

how false goods

bring no happiness.

Greed is never

satisfied by riches.

Why does crime pay

so well?

Rise above earthly

things to see divine

truth.

The power of good

people; the

impotence of the bad.

The slavery of

wickedness.

The true reward for

goodness is

goodness. Wicked

people are like

various animals.

Story of Ulysses and

Circes. Evil may not

conquer a good

man¡¯s heart.

The true nature of

chance occurrences.

The law of divine

order diects

seemingly chance

happenings.

Does free will exist?

God sees everything

in one stroke of

thought.

How can God¡¯s

precognition coexist

with man¡¯s free will?

If God knows all that

will happen, isn¡¯t he

to blame for all evil?

Meter 3

Earthly existence has

obscured man¡¯s

vision from seeing or

remembering the

truth.

1

Book I

Meter 4

Book II

Prose 4

Book III

Prose 4

Book IV

Prose 4

Book V

Prose 4

Prose 4

Meter 4

Meter 4

Meter 4

Meter 4

Meter 5

Prose 5

Prose 5

Prose 5

Prose 5

Prose 5

Meter 5

Meter 5

Meter 5

Meter 6

Prose 6

Prose 6

Prose 6

Prose 6

Meter 6

Meter 6

Meter 6

Hope for nothing;

dread nothing to be

free.

Boethius¡¯ bio and his

complaints.

Why does God fail to

rule man?

Philosophy: God has

not abandoned you;

you have fled the

safety of your true

home.

The rebel against

nature¡¯s laws must

fail.

Philosophy, as

doctor, diagnosis his

ills.

Meter 7

Abandon joy, drive

away fear, dispel

hope, and do not let

sorrow approach.

Men are either

miserable over what

they have lost, or

over what they may

lose.

Build your house on

a solid foundation.

Why do you embrace

alien goods as if they

were yours?

Happy was the first

age of men. They

were content with

little.

Honor does not come

to virtue through

dignity, but the other

way around.

The horror of joining

evil with power.

Prose 7

Honors may be

fouled by rogues,

dim over time, or be

scorned by the

people.

What happiness is in

the lordship of a

Nero?

Those who have

power live in fear.

A truly mighty ruler

must conquer

himself.

What value is glory

or fame to the

conscience of wise

men?

Since all men come

from God, no one is

ignoble unless given

over to vice.

Bad men are

unhappier when

unpunished than

when they are

chastised righteously.

Why are men

addicted to deadly

war?

Boethius is baffled

why good God lets

bad people inflict

pain on good people.

The ignorant are

baffled and agitated

by unusual natural

events

Comparison and

contrast of

Providence and

destiny.

Prose 7

Meter 7

Meter 7

Meter 7

Prose 8

Prose 8

Death equalizes the

highest and lowest.

Mean Fortune can be

instructive.

The sickness of

carnal joys.

Carnal joy is like a

bee: first honey, then

a sting.

Whence comes the

self-knowledge that

probes and beholds

all things?

The different levels

of mind perceive

reality differently

and cannot know the

perceptions of the

higher levels.

Meter 5

Of all animals, only

man can look up to

the divine presence.

Prose 6

The simple stability

of the divine mind

perceives all time as

one.

All things desire to

be under the rule of

good.

Prose 7

Man¡¯s glory is tiny

and soon forgotten.

Man perceives with

body, imagination,

reason. Each higher

than the other. God

perceives differently

with simple

intelligence.

Philosophy argues

why all fortune is

good!

Tales of men who

conquered nature and

themselves.

Worldly goods

cannot give what

they promise because

they lack the union

of all their various

good qualities.

2

Book I

Book II

Meter 8

Man would be happy

if Love that rules the

universe ruled his

heart.

Book III

Meter 8

Book IV

Book V

Men seek good in all

the wrong places.

Prose 9

Philosophy proves

the unity of the

qualities of true

good.

Meter 9

Prayer to God the

Engineer of the

universe.

Prose 10

Philosophy uses the

tools of rational

argument to prove

the origin of true

good.

Meter 10

See the brightness by

which the heavens

are governed; then

reject this dark

domination over your

soul.

Prose 11

All things strive to

keep the unity of

their parts.

Meter 11

Seek truth within

yourself, not

externally

Prose 12

Philosophy continues

her rational argument

for God¡¯s

supremacy.

Meter 12

The story of Orpheus

and Eurydice

3

Introduction

Let me begin by saying that this is a work of love, rather than of scholarship. I am proficient

in neither Latin, Greek, nor Middle English. I have not deeply studied the classics of the ancient

Greeks, Romans, nor early Christians¡­so, I am decidedly an amateur! So, what has drawn me to

the Consolation of Philosophy, its sixth century Roman creator, Anicius Manlius Severinus

Bo?thius, and its fourteenth century English interpreter, Geoffrey Chaucer?

From childhood, I have felt a keen revulsion for much of the life of superficial emotion that is

on unashamed parade all around us. It seems to me that almost every influence on human life is

aimed at stealing from us the desire and ability to experience life in a sober, meaningful way. I see

people wallowing in grief and self-pity in response to imposed or imagined losses or dangers. I see

people hysterically titillated by truly trivial events that have nothing to do with them. I see people

trapped in blind rages or sullen, annoyed pouts at imagined slights or snubs. Then with extreme

reluctance, I occasionally see myself doing all these things and being no better, no different than

other people ¨C except, perhaps, for a lingering wish to be other than I am¡­in fact, to be.

I was raised in an unusual household. My parents, having early on eschewed all attachment to

organized religion as well as to theism, were deeply committed to struggles for social, economic,

and racial justice. They fought to encourage young people to become progressive leaders in the

hope of displacing the old and corrupt guard. My parents had no interest in accumulating wealth and

spent what little they had on their various projects. They endured betrayal by colleagues, repeated

failure, and even jail without becoming defeated by the bitterness or regret that felled so many of

their comrades. Their strength was founded on an unshakable faith, not in God, but in the basic

decency of mankind.

Observing such a serious family at close range, it was, perhaps not strange that at a young age,

I found sympathetic vibrations in such works as The Manual by Epictetus, The Holy Rule by St.

Benedict, The Pilgrim¡¯s Progress by John Bunyan, the transcendental poems of William

Wordsworth, and The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. Only much later in life was I

introduced to the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky 1 and joined the Gurdjieff Foundation

of Illinois. It was from Gurdjieff that I began learning to see myself in the faces around me and to

sense the compelling need to look inside myself for the energy to strip away layers of accreted

falseness that had clung to my essence from years of survival in a world of deceit. It seems to me

that having spent much of my life as an atheist enabled me to absorb philosophical and theosophical

writings with something of a child¡¯s questioning naivet¨¦, and without the automatic associations

that can shut down or dim the perceptions of a person who has been steeped in religious dogma and

doctrine. Gurdjieff wrote the shocking assertion that people who do not succeed in working on

themselves have no being, do not exist as humans. Boethius wrote, ¡°Perhaps it seems to some folks

a fantastical thing to say that the wicked, who are the majority of men, are nothing¨Chave no being;

but nevertheless, it is true¡± (Book III, Prose 2).

I first read the Consolation of Philosophy during the summer after high school having been

inspired by a quirky and brilliant teacher, Ms. Margaret Annan. Ms. Annan pointed out the

sometimes gentle, sometimes bitter satire that underlie many of Chaucer¡¯s tales. She suggested that

even though the object of the characters¡¯ pilgrimage was the shrine of Thomas ¨¤ Becket, who had

been martyred 200 years earlier for challenging the supremacy of the king over the rights and

privileges of the Roman Catholic Church, that church was still powerful, still the official church of

the land (until 1534), and that Chaucer may well have been taking considerable risk by scoffing at

the flawed bearers of its message. Perhaps because of the annoying questions I continually fired at

For those interested in exploring the ideas developed by Gurdjieff, I recommend reading In Search of the Miraculous by P.D.

Ouspensky and All and Everything by G. I. Gurdjieff (consisting of three books: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An

Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man, Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life is Real Only Then When I am).

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